Specter Within
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: [Sequel to Spectrum Beneath] Olivia Deering is on the run in earnest now, from both the DWMA and the entire Cascadia corporation, and things are getting worse than she ever imagined very quickly indeed. White Star's got his own problems to deal with, Midori's scrambling to protect them both, and together they struggle to survive in a brutal, changing world.
1. Chapter 1

HEY! so here it is! the sequel to my fic about Black Star's parents, Olivia & White Star! :) It's not finished yet by any means, so don't expect super fast updates, but I WILL try to ensure long chapters when I do update. this one's a bit short, but i'll probably post ch. 2 in a few days. Also, if ffnet deletes this dang thing the way it did the SE story I tried to post yesterday (FOUR TIMES ughhhh), I'm really fucking sorry. Just an apology in advance, in case. ;) Also, this lovely cover art is by Marsh of Sleep! Thanks Marsh! She also beta'd this for me, so basically she's an angel come to earth.

And yes, you do have to go read Spectrum Beneath (linked to on my main profile) or this will make less than zero sense to you ;) This picks up pretty soon after the end of Spectrum Beneath, so. Enjoy! 3

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One: Unravel<strong>

* * *

><p>A lifetime's worth of instincts honed through necessity brought Midori awake scant seconds before White Star burst through the ancient door, one cheek still creased from sleep and hair even more wild than usual.<p>

"Liv's gone," he blurted at once, looking beyond agitated. "She's gone, she left!"

"Fucking hell!" Midori leapt to his feet and brushed past White Star into the living room of the abandoned hunting shack they'd broken into a week ago. Sure enough, the ratty old couch she'd been camping out on was empty, blankets askew.

White Star came slouching over to join Midori in staring at the thing, gnawing on one fingernail. He reached down and set a hand on a cushion. "Still warm."

"We could catch up to her, probably. Be a real good trail in this snow." Midori swung around to make sure she'd at least had the goddamn sense to take some supplies, and she had, thank goodness; maybe she wasn't entirely out of her mind. Her backpack was missing from its usual place between his and White Star's, and her green parka wasn't hanging next to the door.

"Maybe." The kid looked quietly enraged, eyeing the empty couch with slit eyes. "I don't think I want to."

Midori ran a hand over his head, absently irritated at the stubble he felt. "Thought you wanted to make your brother proud, draggin' home a witch?" he said nastily.

It was a low blow, an immature attempt to vent some of the frustration and worry that had been building for weeks, and White Star practically hissed at him for it, deservedly. "That's only like _half_ true and you know it!"

Midori grunted, lit their stolen lantern, and held it up to peer out the narrow front window of the cabin. Squinting into the swirling grey night, he could just make out a set of small footprints, already filling in with fresh snow, heading from the porch out into the dark trees. "West," he said. "She's heading for town. Fuck! Her cast ain't even off yet! What the- oh, dammit all!"

White Star, amazingly, scowled harder, coming over and elbowing Midori aside to take a gander of his own at the footprints, pushing his nose against the glass like he might somehow magically divine what the hell Olivia had been thinking, taking off in the middle of the night. After a moment he said quietly, "I guess she thought we'd stop her."

"Yeah," Midori said, pretending such a lack of trust didn't twinge a bit.

Judging by the supremely bratty way White Star started stomping around kicking things, he was feeling the same. "Maybe we're better off. Now we can go home. Like, _finally_."

"Oh, hell, yeah, because that'll go so swell," Midori chided, snagging one of Olivia's abandoned blankets and wrapping himself up burrito-style as the fierce cold started his old bones to aching; they hadn't dared start a fire, even in this weather, for fear someone would come and investigate. There were far too many places right now flashing Olivia's DWMA student photo all over, the papers and the news. Every person who saw her was one too many, and over the past three months they'd all learned to tell when someone was looking at her too familiarly. It seemed every time they found a good hiding hole to hunker down in, a place where the kids could try and get their heads back on straight, somebody would glimpse her and get that tell-tale, wide-eyed expression, and then they'd be back on the road, running from everybody and everything, the fear constant and bitter until they could hardly bear to close their eyes.

"We've _been_ staying in touch," White Star said uneasily, referring to his brother the way he usually did now, in the abstract, not saying his name. "He said to keep helping her."

"Yeah, 'cause-"

"I know! I know, because he wants a damn witch for the Clan, you don't have to keep rubbing it in!" White Star exploded, kicking over his own boots viciously. "I get it! I fucking helped her on my own, didn't I, you can quit acting like I'm such an asshole!"

Midori heaved a vast sigh and wondered vaguely when the hell he'd gotten so elderly. God, he'd been dreading the day when puberty hit White Star since way back during the terrible twos, and he'd obviously been right to do so. He sent up a silent threat to whatever vengeful spirit controlled the hormones of adolescent assassins and said appeasingly, "I know. Sorry. It's just your damn brother pisses me off sometimes, and I really don't want him getting his hands on her."

"What's the worst thing he can do?" White Star said, snarling and as close to hysteric as he ever got, eyes glinting rabidly yellowish in the lantern light. "Throw her in a haunted forest so she can catch a demon too? The thing's in love with her, she'd probably do great there, better than I did!"

There was a long moment of silence as the kid realized his error, then Midori said slowly, "You said it was gone."

"I- well- it did go, for a while!"

"Oh? And when the hell were you going to tell me it was back, huh?"

"It's not a problem when she's here, okay? It leaves me alone!"

"So what's it doing now?" Midori barked, leaning over and shoving his face close to White Star's.

White Star fidgeted, the anger draining away as fast as it had come, glancing almost sadly at the door. "It's telling me to go get her," he sighed. "It's on the back of the couch, by the way, so don't worry that it's touching you."

"Tell it to take a long walk off a short pier. We'll go after her in the mornin'," Midori decided, taking another reluctant glance out the window as the winds howled. "If she really wants to be found, she'll leave a pretty obvious trail, I think. Anyway, you and I'd be popsicles in ten minutes out there."

"If she _wanted _to be found, why would she leave in the first place? It's pretty stupid."

Midori glared, scratching beneath his eye patch. "How often has she told us to just leave her and go home, huh? She feels guilty, you moron, even you should be able to figure that out. What people do doesn't always match up with what they're really feelin'."

"Oh." White Star appeared to consider this, then his head whipped around and he lunged at the couch, swinging wildly into thin air. "Shut the hell up, you stupid chicken! Shut up about her!"

"I swear I'll find a priest if I have to," Midori said threateningly at the place White Star was screaming at, feeling rather foolish, as he always did when he said something to their supernatural stowaway.

White Star gave a hideous laugh, eyes still tracking something invisible around and around the room; in that moment he looked so like his brother that Midori's skin prickled. "It says a priest'll be useless," he reported. "It says we'd better go after her or it'll make my life miserable, so obviously I owe Olivia big time."

"It's so helpful when you're sarcastic," Midori said acidly.

"Wha- like you're one to talk!"

"Whatever. Put your earplugs in and go back to sleep, the bird'll be there in the morning, I'm sure." Midori addressed his next words to the place White Star was staring. "Leave him alone! We're going after her in a few hours, once it's light. She won't get far in this mess anyway, and she's not stupid enough to get herself frozen." He hoped, he dearly hoped that her witchy powers would keep her safe, but he also wasn't about to chain the girl up to keep her with them, not if she wanted liberty that badly. If he hadn't sat her down and, in a desperate bid to put some spark back in her, had a long, excessively awkward talk about life and relationships and growing up, he'd have been afraid that she'd go running back to that knife girl and throw herself on Death's dubious mercy, but as it was, well….

"I hope she's got a plan," White Star mumbled as he worked his earplugs in. "I mean, where does she think she's even going?"

"No idea," Midori said, quite truthfully, and with a heavy heart he went back to bed.

* * *

><p>It was cold, very cold, but Olivia could still feel her fingertips and toes, so she figured she should still press on. It was slow going, though, slogging through the snow and pushing against the wind, which was fierce even deep within the forest. If it hadn't been for the battered fence posts poking up out of the snow in regular intervals to mark the road, she'd have been lost not five minutes after leaving the cabin.<p>

Had Midori and Nova found out her absence yet? She cringed a little and pulled her hood tighter around her face, squinting as the wind burned her eyes. Midori would be pissed and worried in equal parts, and she didn't know which was worse, because Midori's disappointment had a way of cutting sharper than any knife she'd ever felt. Nova would probably throw a really splendid tantrum and then call her names before demanding they go look for her.

She took another paranoid look over her shoulder, but the scarlet raven was still nowhere to be found. Hopefully it wouldn't bother Nova too much, she'd _told _it not to, but guilt for leaving him to the thing's merciless taunting was extra weight on her spirit.

"Sorry," she whispered into the cutting wind, and then she put her head down and pushed on, ignoring the ache in her legs.

* * *

><p>Her father looked just as she remembered, a very handsome ice sculpture wrapped in a dark grey peacoat and an air of pronounced fury. Olivia could hardly stand to look at him, yet she couldn't look away, so she settled for staring at his glossy shoes, so incongruous in the empty parking lot's pristine snow. His secretary, standing beside him with her pale hair tousled by the wind and looking as if she'd been made to be surrounded by winter, would have been beautiful if not for the cruel twist of her lips, somehow almost more foreboding than even Mr. Deering's scowl.<p>

"You've disappointed me," were his first words to her, and she tried hard to hide her flinch, shoulders lifting defensively.

"I'm sorry," she blurted automatically, and then wondered, aghast at herself, if it were true, because at the time she'd betrayed him, she'd never known anything better than her want to stay with Mira. The idea of making her own choices- of even _having _choices- had been so seductive, and she'd been so cocooned in the false safety of the DWMA that she'd never felt any real regret at her threats towards him and Cascadia. There had been plenty of fear, though, and right now it was back in full force, though her father appeared to have come alone- well, almost- and unarmed, as he'd promised.

She shivered and shaded her eyes with one hand against the bright noon sun, studying him. "Fine. I'll meet you there," he'd said a week ago, voice crackling into her ear from the battered payphone as she glanced around nervously, making sure Midori and Nova were still busy, and he hadn't lied, though she'd come to meet him more than halfway expecting that she'd never leave again. She'd spent the entire seven days between the phone call and making her nighttime escape in a near-panic, pacing the snowbound cabin and driving the boys to distraction.

So here they were, father and daughter, standing across from each other outside an empty, boarded-up mall in a city two hours north of the cabin where she'd abandoned her comrades, and all the aggrieved, passionate speeches she'd prepared and practiced religiously, over and over again, flew right out of her head. "Well?" he said at last.

Olivia took a very deep breath, scouring her lungs clean with the bitter cold, and decided dizzily that she might as well air her most important grievance first. "You had my friend shot," she said slowly. Faintly she wondered what the hell was wrong with her life, that she should be here, saying such a phrase to her _father. _Now that she'd seen normal, she could, for the first time, recognize dysfunction.

He tilted his head a little, one eyebrow going up in familiar contempt. She realized with mild shock that he was beginning to get crow's feet; it seemed so wrong, for a man like him to have wrinkles shaped from smiling. "Oh? You finally made a friend, then? I suppose that a good father would congratulate you."

Now she did flinch in earnest, taking a step back as his words pierced her. All the times he'd ended their discussions with, 'I love you' flashed through her mind, and she felt rather sick. "You, you tried to kill me too," she said, but it came out more pleading than she would have liked. "All I wanted was a normal life!"

"But you're not normal," he said cruelly. "And beyond that, you're mine. Did you honestly think a silly little girl could blackmail Cascadia? Better people than you have tried and died. You knew exactly what you were doing. Besides, you can't say I didn't warn you."

"Warn me? You never warned me," she said dumbly. "You didn't even answer. You just hired hitmen!"

"Hmm. Well, it appears that my letter was never passed onto you, then. I wrote you and told you that you would have one chance to stop your ridiculous threats, and when you didn't reply, well-" He shrugged uncaringly, flattening down his hair with one hand as a particularly fierce gust of wind whipped past them.

Olivia considered that as calmly as she could manage, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't come up with a reason for Midori to keep a letter like that from her. "You're lying."

"No," Mr. Deering said serenely, voice very at odds with his irritated frown. "But then, you lied to me, so perhaps we're even."

"I didn't-"

"Pretending that you'd found your mother!" his secretary cut in, leaning forward viciously. "When I ate her soul the day you were born!"

"Astrid!" Olivia's father said sharply, and she subsided instantly, but her hungry gaze never left Olivia.

Everything tilted, and Olivia shook her head hard, orangish strands of dyed hair tangling around her face. She swayed like a rotten tree in a storm. Her mother, oh, how many nights had she lain awake, guiltily weaving elaborate fantasies of their loving reunion, of all the things they would say and do when they finally met, how sad her mother would be for having left her, and now it was all gone in a heartbeat. He'd said it so casually, so uncaringly.

"You- oh, god, you killed my _mother_," she stammered, hands over her mouth in horror. "And then you kept me, like a, like a lab rat, all these years, experimenting on me! And you didn't even tell me I'm a witch!" He opened his mouth as if to reply, but Olivia couldn't stop her furious words anymore than she could stop the shimmering scales from creeping up her cheeks. "How_ could you_! Did you think you could just control me for my whole life? That's it, isn't it, I'm not even a- a person to you! I'm just something else you can make money off! I hate you!"

He smiled softly, watching with clear interest as she struggled to tamp down her powers as they burned bright and angry in her chest. "So why did you call me?" he said, completely ignoring her outburst.

She clenched her jaw and said furiously, "I wanted to talk! I wanted to explain!"

"Ah, good. So you'll come back, then. I'm glad all this ridiculousness is done and over with," he said dismissively, already turning to head back to his black SUV, parked in the very farthest corner of the lot.

"No," she said immediately, panicked. "No! I'm not going back there!" It didn't matter now that she'd intended to resume her old life and pretend that the agonizing months just past had never happened.

Mr. Deering paused, glancing at her sideways, and something in the expression set off all the alarms in her head. "Oh?" he said silkily, and then she knew for certain that she was in trouble. "That's too bad. I invested a lot of time and money into you. I do hate it when a project fails." He held out a hand to Astrid, and with an acidic hiss and a flush of white light, there was a shining sword in his palm and a gleam like she'd never seen his black eyes. She let loose the reins on her power immediately, like she hadn't dared do since she'd pulled Mira from beneath the DWMA dorms, gasping and shaking as madness and fury swept through her blood like the tides.

"Poor halfbreed," said Astrid, sounding very far away. "Do you really think you can stop us?"

"I'll do more than stop you," Olivia screamed over the whistling wind, black talons digging into her palms. "I'll kill you both for what you did to me!"

Did she mean it? She didn't know, even now, even with her tears burning angry trails down her face, but when her father and his secretary laughed, she _wanted _to mean it. She fell into a combat stance, cursing herself for being naive enough to keep her word and come unarmed, and then a strange glint caught her eye from atop the empty mall.


	2. Chapter 2

"This is fucking useless," White Star mumbled, kicking angrily at a snowdrift. "I hate this place. I hate this _continent. _I wanna go home!"

"One more place to check, okay?" Midori sighed, scratching beneath his bandanna. "Just quit whining."

In truth, he was uneasy himself, walking through the little town they'd tracked Olivia's footsteps to. If it were up to him he'd be holed up in that cabin still, or somewhere else safe; all his instincts were telling him to stay the hell out of public for a good long while, at least until the media coverage on the girl died down, but at least she wasn't _with _them. He still hadn't seen himself or White Star in any coverage related to her, but that didn't mean their association wasn't known; plenty of people had seen him carry her away from the rubble of the Academy's dorms.

"The bus station," White Star stated as they rounded the corner. "You think she'd be stupid enough to take a bus to wherever she's going?"

"How else is she gonna get anywhere fast? 'Sides, it's a lot less dangerous than an underage girl stealin' a car or hitchin' rides," Midori pointed out in a low voice, shoving White Star roughly through the door. "Anyway, she looks a fair bit different now we dyed her blonde. Now shut it." He flashed a smile at the attendant as they headed up to the counter, trying very hard to appear shorter and unintimidating. "Hey, guy, you think you can help me out? We're lookin' for my niece, she did a runner last night and her mom's real worried. I think she probably tried to meet up with her boyfriend in Milwaukee."

"Oh," the employee said. He was a scruffy young man with a rather fungal goatee, and his languid tone only confirmed Midori's first impression- that the guy was a lazy and, thankfully, didn't give a shit. "That sucks."

"Well, can you tell me if she showed up here this morning? Little blonde teenager, brown eyes, uh, green coat, I think. Probably not a lot of luggage, she snuck out the window," Midori pushed, trying to look familial and concerned. It wasn't much of a stretch, really.

"I dunno. I think that's invasion of privacy or something."

"It's just the cops won't do anything for 48 hours," Midori persisted. "Stupid damn law. Who knows what the poor girl's getting herself into? Two days might be too long."

"I guess," Goatee sighed lethargically, digging a finger into his ear. "Yeah, I remember her from this morning, actually. We don't get a lot of people through here, you know? I don't even know why they have a bus station here. But yeah, she got on the 7:30 northbound."

"Oh, all right!" White Star whispered excitedly; Midori cuffed him absently.

"Can you tell me where that line stops? Can I get a, uh, list of the stops or routes or something?" he asked, crossing his fingers under the counter.

"Sure, over there," said the employee, flapping a bony hand in the direction of a dusty stand of brochures before yawning cavernously and falling back into his previous half-asleep slump. Midori nodded his thanks and, feeling deeply lucky, went over and took a map of the bus stops, shaking his head at an incredibly deluded brochure that proclaimed the pathetic burg they were in to be, 'Wisconsin's Top Tourist Experience'.

They headed back outside, huddling together in the shelter of the building's corner as the wind picked up, studying the map. "She coulda gone almost anywhere," White Star said dismally, prodding at all the little yellow stars that marked cities the buses would stop at.

"Yeah," Midori said slowly. "But, and I hope I'm wrong about this, I bet you she went right here." He poked at a little grey plane icon next to Kenosha's star. "Only place big enough to have an airport that she's got money to get a ticket to."

"Why's an airport matter?" White Star asked, swatting at something near his head that Midori couldn't see, obviously the raven, which had apparently deigned to keep quiet after they both promised to go after Olivia. "She doesn't have near enough cash for a plane ticket and she's not big on stealing."

Midori sighed and folded up the map, tucking it inside his thick jacket. "I got a feelin' she's meetin' up with her old man and he'll be the one on the plane," he said grimly, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. "You notice her duckin' out to make a phone call the first time we came through this place and you and I bought the food? She looked like she was gonna pass out when she came back and she's been all anxious ever since. It's the only thing I can think of, I mean, she doesn't think she's got anywhere else to go and she doesn't think he'll stop coming after her, she told me so the other day."

White Star scoffed and ran his hands through his already wild hair. He looked like he'd been electrocuted, and his agitated expression said he might even _welcome _the distraction of some light electrocution. "There's no way she's gonna go running back to the company that's been trying to kill her for months," he spat.

"Look," Midori snapped, losing the thin thread of patience he'd been clutching since he awoke to find her gone. "I don't have any other ideas, okay? We should've just taken her _home_, like you said, and kept her safe, but I let her go and I fucked up and I am not gonna be responsible for her livin' her life under that fucked up company and her shitty dad! Got it? All we can do is try and find her!" He pushed aside the fact that she'd be only a little better off with the Clan than she'd been with Cascadia, because honestly he didn't have a clue what else to do.

White Star leaned against the building, looking away, lips pressed together tight, and Midori realized with a start that the kid had shot up another good inch. For a moment, as White Star's green eyes narrowed in thought, Midori might as well have been looking at Grey Star, and it shook him. Olivia'd done the boy more good than either of them realized, she'd softened him, and though White Star would probably rather drink bleach than admit it, he was obviously worried about her. Suddenly Midori couldn't bear to think of the kid returning to the Clan compound alone, growing older and colder and merciless, stepping back onto the dark path that he'd only just turned aside from.

"We'll find her," he said again, gripping White Star's shoulder for a moment, and then he pulled his hood back up and headed back inside to buy tickets, keeping his back to the single camera and praying that the bus wouldn't be crowded; the whole reason they'd headed to the sparsely populated, rural bits of a godforsaken state like Wisconsin was to keep out of the public eye as much as possible until the media furor died down and they could set about sneaking home.

White Star crossed his arms and slumped over ridiculously in his seat the whole bus ride, spending two and a half hours straight pouting with dedication that Midori almost found impressive. He didn't even react when Midori started humming obnoxiously in his ear; Midori had to actually pretend he was about to pluck out some of the kid's hilarious first attempt at facial hair to get a reaction.

"What?" White Star exploded, smacking Midori's hands away from his patchy partial moustache.

Trying valiantly to bite down his grin and viciously grateful for the brief moment of normalcy, Midori said, "When we get there, if we find her, what do you want to do?"

"Whaddaya mean, we're gonna bring her back!"

"Back where?" Midori said carefully. "Back to Japan and the Clan? It'll be a bit still before I feel safe sneakin' over the border to anywhere, so if that's our plan, we'll be dodging around just like we've been for a few more months, unless Grey Star stops being an ass and sends some help."

"Okay," White Star said after a moment, looking around carefully to make sure no one was listening, though of course Midori already had, and anyway there were only six other passengers. "So, whatever, fine. If I apologize to him he probably will." He grimaced at the thought.

"What if she doesn't wanna come with us?"

"I-" The kid frowned. "Well, I'll convince her. Feels kind of shitty to just leave her all alone, you know."

Midori beamed at him and ruffled his hair in an excess of relief at hearing him say something openly human. "Yeah. Except what if her father doesn't want to let her go?"

"Wha-"

"We've got four guns between us, limited ammunition, and not a damn thing else except a few blades. He runs Cascadia, I'm pretty sure they've got killer robots or something. We can't take him and whatever backup I'm sure he brought by ourselves if he decides it's finders keepers," Midori said firmly.

White Star brooded unsubtly, kicking the back of the empty seat in front of him. "I guess we'll play it by ear, right?" he said finally. "If her dad's there we'll just look at the situation and go from there."

"Man, your planning skills are gettin' so good."

"Shut up, old man."

* * *

><p>The employee at the bus station in Kenosha was much less cooperative than the previous one; she flat-out refused to tell them anything about whether or not she'd seen a little blonde girl disembark, and her skeptical glare made Midori pull White Star away almost immediately, cursing silently. That lady looked exactly the type to remember faces on the news, and though neither Midori nor White Star had gotten their pictures linked with the terrorist witch Lord Death was hunting, it <em>had <em>been mentioned that she was possibly traveling with a boy and a very tall man. They had no better luck asking the bus driver, either.

"Well, now what?" White Star said wearily, once they were outside and walking down the slushy sidewalk.

"I have no idea," Midori admitted, putting a gloved palm over his aching eye socket. "She coulda gone anywhere. I wish like hell we still had those fancy tracking things." His younger self would never have thought the day would come where he'd long for technology, but damn if it didn't make life easier.

"Yeah." White Star kicked a rock hard enough that it nearly took out some lady's poodle; she glared at him and he snarled right back, so viciously that she paled and crossed the street. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, eyebrows raised. "Oh," he said, then, "Okay. Bird says he can track her, maybe, because witches feel different, or something."

"And the feathery dickhead's just now telling us that? Christ, I hate that thing. Can it- I mean, are we even in the right city? Can it tell?" Hope and fear pulled equally tight on his heart.

There was a moment of silence as White Star listened to the thing, then he said, "Well, try harder!" Another pause, then, exuberantly, "Yeah! It says she's that way." He pointed and then took off so fast that he nearly slipped in the snow.

"Wait up," Midori shouted uselessly, following at once. White Star slowed for a moment to let him catch up, then swerved into an alley that stank, even in the cold, of garbage. Nonetheless, it was cover that they desperately needed, and they stayed on the back streets as they ran. Every so often White Star would skid to a stop and hiss profanity at their unseen guide, apparently his method of encouraging the thing as it got its bearings and sniffed Olivia out; Midori stayed silent whenever that happened and concentrated on getting his breath back.

After almost an hour of running about, doubling back a few times and eventually working their way towards a rather run-down, suburban bit of the city, where the lawns were brown and wild and nobody would meet their eyes, they turned a corner and White Star stopped again. "Here, he says she's here," he wheezed, bending over with his hands on his knees for a moment before lifting one hand to point at the grungy mall before them; it was obviously abandoned, the neon signs dark and weathered, but a single set of tire tracks led across the otherwise pristine, snowy parking lot and around the corner of the building.

Midori spat thick saliva from his mouth and said breathlessly, wiping his forehead, "Finally." He desperately wanted to take a moment to rest, but the thought of Olivia drove him on.

They checked their weaponry and crossed the parking lot, the cold steel of their guns almost painful in their palms. There was no point trying to sneak up; there _was_ no cover of any sort, only a few small, leafless trees scattered about the edges of the pavement. Midori was sweating and it was from more than their desperate run. A situation like this made his skin creep. Walking up blatantly to a situation like this, to the man who could very well be the biggest arms dealer on the planet…

He made a snap decision just before they rounded the corner of the mall. "Stay here," he said to White Star.

"Fuck you," White Star said, immediately and predictably.

"No. Listen, this is insane! This goes against everything I've ever taught you and I'm a fool for it! There's no way I'm takin' you down with me," Midori hissed, almost pleading, holding White Star forcibly by the hood of his jacket.

White Star's eyes were huge and his gun was shaking. But when he said, "Clan doesn't abandon each other," his voice was resolute.

"We might need help getting out of here quick," Midori said sharply, half-considering just dazing the boy with a good blow to the jaw, but then from somewhere above their heads came a soft pop.

It was almost a gentle noise, quieter than a balloon popping, but it put both of them on the ground and tight against the wall. "Shit, shit, shit," White Star was chanting, hands over his head. Midori squirmed forward in the freezing snow until he could peer around the corner of the building.

"Oh," he breathed, and then he hauled White Star upright and they took off towards the glimmering force of nature that was their witch. She was half-crouched, snarling at a sharply dressed man with even colder eyes set in a face nearly twin to her own. It seemed the shot they'd heard had merely been a warning.

Midori and White Star sprinted to flank her, and miraculously, the sniper on the roof didn't take them out. Mr. Deering, appearing quite unperturbed even as flurries of slush began to whirl around his daughter, raised a brow at them. "So the clan's been keeping you as a little pet, then. You were her support, weren't you?" Mr. Deering said after a moment, examining Midori with dark eyes that were painfully familiar.

"Don't touch them," Olivia spat. "Don't you dare!"

"Don't touch her either," White Star added grimly, shoulder-to-shoulder with her, gun steady at her father's chest.

He looked at them for a long moment, the silvery blade in his hand vibrating with something that sounded almost like laughter. "You all know I could have you killed in a heartbeat," he told them, sounding quite pleased with himself and not at all worried. The fact that they hadn't been shot dead in their ridiculous dash to Olivia had Midori _very _worried, though.

"Bullshit," White Star snarled.

Mr. Deering laughed, and Olivia screeched in ear-shattering rage. The air around them grew so cold that flowery crystals of shining ice started to seep across the trampled snow. "I'll never go back with you! Never! Even if you drag me back in chains I'll die before I work for you again!" Her words were strong and her hands were still tipped with the cruel talons of a witch, but her voice broke audibly.

Dramatic, but clear enough, Midori thought, swallowing dryly as he watched the light glinting off the sniper's scope; certainly there were others in the buildings nearby, and he felt like he wanted to climb out of his skin at the thought. Any moment a bullet could strike his unprotected back, and he cursed himself and everything all at once. This whole chaotic mess was most decidedly _not _the way a top Star Clan assassin should run things.

Very quickly he ran through their options; he didn't think Olivia could pull off any fantastic witchwork, not reliably, anyway, considering how unfamiliar she was with her powers still- she'd flat out refused to use them since the Academy.

He and White Star were fairly useless too at the moment. "This is a rather public place," he said brusquely, struck by a mad idea and deciding instantly to go for it; a stalemate like this could only end badly. "Maybe you ain't the only one with backup in hidin'. It'd be a crying shame if the papers got ahold of photos of you meeting with the little witch girl everyone's been hunting, eh? Especially since Death already knows Cascadia was involved." Mr. Deering said nothing, but there was a tell-tale muscle jumping in his temple, and Midori's heart leapt so painfully it was almost difficult to talk. "Clan aren't stupid," he bit out, and the brutal rage roughening his voice shocked him. He glanced at Olivia, at the sparkling tears rimming her opaque rainbow eyes, and let himself think of Shannon for the first time in a long time. "We're just as good with a camera as we are with a blade."

He let that sink in, watched Mr. Deering's back stiffen slightly, then bit his lip to muffle a wildly inappropriate and somewhat hysterical snort when White Star sneered, "You fucking stupid old asshole! You thought Olivia was dumb enough to just call you up and go back to you after everything? She planned all of this. I guess she was right, you really were dumb enough to think you could snap your fingers and she'd come running." Olivia, to her credit, didn't let on to her surprise at that.

"We can still kill them all," the bright sword said, vibrating so hard that a humming like a thousand bees filled the air.

"Do it and your nasty little secrets will be all over every major news network in the civilized world by tomorrow," Midori said.

Mr. Deering sighed and tossed the sword carefully at the ground; with a sizzle of white light, a blonde woman so beautiful as to be entirely untouchable stood beside him, straightening her stylish jacket as she curled her lip at Olivia. "Let's go, Astrid. It seems I underestimated my daughter's... filial devotion." With nothing more than that, they turned to walk towards their black SUV, and the sniper on the roof fired another warning round that made them all flinch, clear indication of what would happen if they tried anything.

"He won't stop," Olivia cried, her glassy antlers melting away as Midori and White Star promptly grabbed her by the elbows and bolted in the other direction. "He won't stop, he only thought I was too stupid to try anything and I _was_, I was just going to go back to him! I was just-" She pulled her arms free of their grip and took a moment to try and breathe, gulping air so hard Midori was a little afraid she might hyperventilate.

"We don't have time for your whining," White Star said, grabbing her arm again, not ungently. "You can cry later, I promise, it'll be okay but we gotta get out of here."

"You told him _I _planned an ambush," she said blankly, staggering through the snowdrifts. She'd have fallen if not for their support. "So he thinks I've got even more blackmail on him now, that I can prove Cascadia's working with witches."

"Yeah, I did, maybe he'll leave you the fuck alone now, duh," White Star snapped. "Now come on already!"

She went, dazedly. They pulled the hood of her jacket up to hide the stray scales that still shimmered like fairy freckles across her cheekbones and dove into the thick of the city, slipping into the clotted masses with their heads down and their faces averted, reasoning that it was slightly better to risk being identified by a civilian than getting caught by any possible, immediate Cascadia retaliation.

They spent most of the remaining daylight shivering behind a dumpster, then Midori bought a run-down hotel room for the night and snuck the kids in.

Olivia disappeared into the bathroom immediately, and they could hear the shower running. White Star started pacing again, returning to the front door every few minutes to peer through the eyehole. "I'm gonna call him," he said at last.

"Who?" Midori asked dully, rubbing his throbbing temples.

"My brother. We're taking her home."

"No, you're not," Olivia said, materializing from the bathroom with a rush of curling steam, looking very tiny and pallid in one of Midori's shirts, which hung to her calves. The only color on her was the bruised skin beneath her eyes. Combined with the ghastly orangish shade of their half-failed dye job, she looked both horribly young and disturbingly old all at once. In all honesty, despite her earlier transformations, it was the most _witch_ Midori had seen her. He thought numbly, pressing one palm to his empty socket, that perhaps it was something in her eyes. "I'm still leaving."

"What? Why?" White Star squawked.

She shrugged limply. "I don't want to be anyone's property anymore. That's why the Clan would want me. Not, um, not you two, I know that, but the rest of them would only take me because of the witch thing."

"Sweetheart, you're only fourteen," Midori said, curling his hands tightly into the bed's scratchy quilt. It was so bitter, but he knew the look in her eyes too well. She would leave him, and nothing in the world could stop her.

"I'll be fifteen in a few months," she mumbled, falling onto the bed beside him and putting her arms over her face. White Star came over and sat on the very edge next to her, scowling.

"You're being really dumb, even for you," he tried again.

She breathed out slowly, and it sounded painful. "I've decided. I've got to learn to live on my own. I don't want- I mean- I want to decide things for myself."

"It's a pretty scary world out there, girlie," Midori said quietly. "You don't have to leave."

"Yeah, I know," she said needlessly, and they all flopped back on the tiny bed in a depressed heap and stared at the ceiling fan for a long time. "Thank you for rescuing me," she said, once they were all mostly asleep, and then, much later, Midori heard her say, as she pushed a snoring White Star's arm off her neck to get up, "I'll keep watch."

Very late in the night, Midori woke again to see her silhouetted against the open door. "I love you both. Even Nova," she whispered, and before he could say anything she was gone.

He kept watch himself for the rest of the night, sitting in the wobbly chair by the window with his lone eye pressed to the hairline crack between the curtains, heart leaping into his throat irrationally every time he heard police sirens in the distance.

In the morning, when White Star woke, he looked around once and then said wearily, "At least she took the bird."

* * *

><p>YO HERE IT IS CHAPTER TWO :) :)<p>

so... i'm gonna be THAT AUTHOR and ask politely that you pretty please review if you liked this, maybe. I've worked pretty damn hard on it and it's nice to get feedback and know that people are enjoying it, you know? I write for my readers, haha. :) anyway, yeah, so thanks for reading and a big thank you to marshofsleep for betaing this ;)


	3. Chapter 3

Everything was _so _much harder without the proper tools, Olivia thought, running a hand fretfully over the butt of her lone gun, tucked lovingly into her bulging backpack. Maria had been right when she said so many months ago that Olivia was useless without her father to come bail her out and provide her with fancy toys.

Maybe she'd just get shot or something, in her very first solo job ever, caught off guard by some lucky criminal, and that would be that, an ignominious end to Cascadia's top secret witch. She'd never even earn a name like she'd dreamed. It seemed horrifically probable, honestly, and all of a sudden she missed Midori and Nova even more than usual. She'd survived the past weeks by pretending sternly that the longing was only boredom, instead of wrenching loneliness compounded by constant apprehension, but now all at once, just when she'd finally done something _right_, it asserted itself painfully right in her cracked heart.

What would she tell Midori? "I made it to Alabama all by myself without getting caught, and I found someone to hire me," she'd say, and he'd punch her in the shoulder and tell her she'd done good. Nova would probably punch her too, but his praise would be confined to a sideways grin and a cheerful insult. She'd take it gladly anyway, especially since she'd discovered that the ruder Nova got often coincided with how excited he was.

"You sure you got this, honeybunches? I'll be glad to have this one six feet under, tell you what. He's bein' a real pain, yanno?" her new employer said, as if reading her mind. Louisa May did indeed seem like the sort of woman who could see right into a person's skull, though. It was something about the sharpness of her bright blue gaze beneath the shield of her spidery false lashes- though it could also be the four-foot python coiled lazily around her neck, very at odds with her aged prom-queen aura.

"Uh, yes, ma'am, I can kill him," Olivia affirmed, eager beyond all belief to just get _paid_. Her stomach had gone past the point of rumbling yesterday and moved into constant, wrenching agony, shriveling into a tight hard fist. Behind the house, something yowled hair-raising harmony with its fellow prisoners, and the chronic chill deep in her chest shook.

Louisa May hummed and drummed her sparkly pink nails on the edge of the tatty lawn chair she was sitting in, before turning to stare off her porch into the middle distance, fanning herself and her snake vigorously with the magazine in her other hand. Her bleached hair, tortured into a kind of elaborate beehive, was so stiff from hairspray that it didn't even budge.

Olivia, entirely unsure of the niceties of being hired to assassinate a woman's competition in the apparently very intense exotic animal market, took a polite sip of her sweet tea, working hard to hide the grimace, because it really was hellaciously _sweet_. She'd only had a few sips but she was fairly sure she'd already started sweating pure sugar. In the past, she'd killed for nobody but Cascadia- it was very strange to be working for someone else. She kept thinking that any minute she'd be handed one of her father's ubiquitous manila folders full of information and dismissed to go climb aboard a plane. "Um, okay, then," she muttered at last, plucking her sweat-damp shirt away from her chest, ignoring as best as she could the prickle of the red raven's claws on her shoulder. "I'll be back when it's done, I guess."

"And it'll be quick?" Louisa May said for the fifth time. She obviously had some sort of history with the man she wanted dead, though she'd ordered his execution with admirable calm.

Olivia wiped the back of her hand across her damp forehead, swiping wayward blondish strands out of her face, and said with a feeling somewhere between empathy and scorn, "Yes. I've got good aim and you said he's only a civilian with little to no security, he'll never see it coming." Possibly the phrase 'only a civilian' was offensive, considering she was speaking to the same thing right now, but it was true. A thought occurred to her, then, and she paused on the steps of the porch. "I am the first person you hired, right?"

"Yep. For this job, anyway. The fella I used to use for this kinda thing caught some lead last month, real sad thing. Told you that, didn't I?"

"Yes. Sorry."

"It's fine, sweetie." Louisa May stared at her for a moment. "Are you _sure_ you can do this? You're awful young. You ought to be daydreaming about boys."

"Uh…" Olivia was stymied for a moment. Apparently the dollar-store eyeliner she'd caked on, in an effort to somewhat disguise the shape of her eyes, hadn't done much to make her look older. She should have slathered on foundation, too; nothing made a girl look old like too much makeup covering the skin. The ugly blonde dye job did help, though, especially now that her dark roots were growing out, and her recent thinness as well. It put new angles onto her face. She looked very different from the fresh-faced, smiling brunette in the Academy's uniform who was still pictured all over the news.

She swallowed and pulled on what Maria had taught her, cocking a hip out and letting her eyelids droop slightly, pressing her lips together a little. "I learned a long time ago boys usually aren't worth my daydreams," she tried, mimicking the upperclassmen she'd heard at the DWMA, and Louisa May let out a trill of laughter.

"Reckon you might actually be eighteen," she giggled uncaringly, fanning herself again and slumping down in the chair, stretching out deeply tan legs. "Well, have fun, and there'll be more pie when you get back, all right? I've a mind to do me some baking today."

"Cool," Olivia said awkwardly, to the sound of the raven's scornful laughter, and, "Thank you for the tea." She left with a deliberate extra sway to her hips, despite the clear feeling that Louisa May hadn't been fooled by her attempts to look older in the slightest. How was it that Olivia could fool an entire camp full of loggers into thinking she was a college kid, but she couldn't sneak a single thing past a monkey-smuggling Southern Barbie doll?

"Don't be fooled by that one, don't let her trick you, the snake lady's a canny one," the raven hissed into her ear. The damn thing had been put into a tizzy by the loud shrieking of all the parrots inside Louisa May's house. Olivia flicked its beak discreetly and it pushed off from her shoulder with an indignant squawk to fly lazy circles above her head, vulture style; never had she been more thankful that nobody else could see the thing than while pursuing her unorthodox 'job hunts'. She'd had enough trouble convincing the ex-cop-slash-private eye who'd referred her to Louisa May that she could kill _anybody_, let alone that she wasn't an insane runaway who talked to an imaginary friend. Now that would have been tricky.

Making her way out of the incongruous, high brick wall surrounding Louisa May's small house, she winced as the bulky man standing too-obvious guard at the gate gave her a severe stare as her stomach persisted in rumbling. She gave him a sheepish, uncomfortable smile and nearly ran.

* * *

><p>Louisa May's ill-fated smuggling competition was indeed clueless. Olivia tracked him down in a day using nothing more than a local phone book, waited for him to leave, and slipped into his house via an unlocked window. It was almost astonishing how simple it was to break into a civilian's house. There was no security system, no hidden cameras, nothing. She didn't have to climb anything, or take out any security guards, or spend days watching and gathering intelligence.<p>

It was all very easy. It was the sort of mission she'd dreamed about after smiling slit-throat women had begun to lurk in her mirror. He came home late that night, a few hours after she'd snuck inside, and she stepped out from the closet and shot him in the back of the head. The silencer on her gun- Cascadia equipment leftover from the arsenal Midori and Nova had been given during the Academy mission- did its job well, of course, and he'd lived alone. No one heard, and nobody came, and for the very first time, she killed without being afraid.

She stood staring at him for a long time. She'd never had such luxury to examine a dead man, to watch as his empty pupils dilated slowly, black holes pulling her in with such gravity that the raven had to pluck tenderly on her ear to stop her from touching his face.

She'd followed all the rules, though, yanked her hair tightly back and tied trash bags over her hands in lieu of the gloves she couldn't afford. His blood spread, an astonishingly large puddle- she'd always been amazed by how much blood was in a human body- and when its dark edge was an inch from her boots, she left, ignoring the chatter and squeals of the three tiny caged lemurs he'd brought home with him, their bulbous yellow eyes luminous and accusing.

"They're going to die, maybe, if someone doesn't come looking for him in a day or two," she whispered to the raven as they crept towards the drainage ditch where she'd been sleeping since she got to this city.

"Starve to death, slowly, slowly. But they're animals. They'll eat each other first, tear the flesh right off, nasty little things," the raven said contemplatively, nuzzling close to her neck before briefly melting into a gooey pink-brown mass that might have been a liver.

"I think the lack of water's the more important thing," she mumbled, curling up in the high grass of the ditch, well hidden from anyone who wasn't walking right over her, staring up at the sweltering stars and pressing her icy hands to her rolling belly.

"Water, water," the raven sighed quietly, nestled in her ugly hair, far heavier than it should have been.

"Think Midori'd be proud of me?" she asked.

The raven didn't answer. It knew it didn't need to.

"What the heck're these?" Louisa May said the next morning.

Olivia, face afire, looked away and muttered, "Uh, lemurs that he had. They were- I thought you would want to sell them, maybe. To pet stores or something."

For a moment, Louisa May's leathery face looked shocked, then she said, "Oh, sweet girl."

Olivia had no idea how to respond to that, so she shuffled her feet and concentrated on looking older. Finally, under Louisa May's melting blue gaze and fearing imminent assault via overly sweet tea and possibly pie, she said, "It all went as expected. No witnesses, no traces left, all care taken to prevent biological contamination of the scene. One round fired directly to the back of the cranium."

"Well," Louisa May said, eyebrows shooting straight up past her crunchy-looking bangs. "Ain't that something. I won't pay you for them, dearie, you know that? Wasn't in the deal."

"I know," Olivia said stiffly.

"Well. My, oh my." Then it came. "Would you like some pie, sug?"

"No thank you," Olivia said, actually taking an involuntary step back. "I, uh, I'd just like to get paid, please."

Five minutes later, she was walking past the bulky security guard again, out the gates of Louisa May's animal empire, her stiff envelope full of cash tucked into her grimy cut-offs, rubbing against the skin of her belly. A thousand dollars, all in fresh, crisp twenties; it felt unreal. Louisa May might as well have paid her in unicorn hair for all the good it would do her. She couldn't rent an apartment, was too afraid to get a hotel room on her own with nobody to keep watch in case she was recognized, and food would be a tiny band-aid on a gaping wound of wrongness.

She ended up just standing there limply on the dirt road that led back to the city, sweating and listening to the distant roar of something very large.

"You'd best git on out of here, girl," the security guard called at last.

She blinked at him. "How much do those lemurs go for?"

"Lemurs? What, one of her little monkey things? Hell if I know."

She pulled out the envelope. "Can I go back in there for a moment?" He hesitated. "You can take my gun."

"Whatever," he said finally, obviously deciding that he'd already searched her anyway, the first time she came in this morning.

Apparently lemurs cost several hundred dollars each, but Olivia walked away down the dirt road for the second time happily enough, despite the baking heat and the loud protests of the tiny animals inside the cage she was carrying. "It's okay," she told them, taking a sharp right into the thickest part of the woods she could see, angling away from both Louisa May's place and the city. She walked for a long time, picking her way slowly through the tangled underbrush and marking the sun's position by her shoulder as Midori had taught her, and eventually she came to a tiny creek.

"It's perfect." The raven huffed in clear disagreement, obviously very put out by the entire business, but the feeling that welled up inside her as she opened the cage door was the closest thing she'd felt to joy in a very long time.

The lemurs didn't move. They huddled miserably in the furthest corner of the tiny cage, glassy-eyed and panting rapidly; even when she rattled the cage, they didn't budge.

"_Go_," she said impatiently, shaking the cage again. One of them gave a chittering sort of moan, but they still didn't do anything. Finally she reached in and tried to grab one of them. It scrambled away from her hand, then, when she finally cornered it and drew it out the cage door, it bit her. "Ow!"

"You dropped it," the raven observed dispassionately. "Oh, and it's broken something, look at it, look at the thing, can't walk right, oh, how sad."

"Oh no, oh no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" She scrambled frantically after it, but it lurched wailing into the thick dry bushes, and she couldn't follow. "Oh no," she moaned, clutching her face.

"Others finally leaving," the raven told her, and indeed, when she whirled around, the other two lemurs had disappeared as well.

She collapsed to the ground beside the empty cage and buried her face in her arms. "I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

* * *

><p>"I fucking hate him," White Star said bitterly.<p>

Seven gaped at him so widely that a clump of rice fell out of his mouth. "Shit! Keep your voice down!"

"What's he gonna do to me?" White Star said defiantly, waving off Seven's attempts to get him to sit the hell down and stop pacing.

"You're a dumbass if you think he won't chop bits off you," Seven said bluntly, giving one of his keyboards a protective pat as White Star stomped too close. "Look what he did to Summer's back."

"I'd like to see him try!"

"I'd've thought Midori had stomped out your irritating tendency to pretend you're a bigshot," Seven observed, shoveling more rice into his face.

"Since when do you eat in the computer room?"

"Oh, this is just storage. This is all stuff Jaune's broken. I keep meaning to repair it," Seven said vaguely, waving a hand.

"Oh." Well, that explained the uncharacteristic dust. "Aren't you supposed to be happy I'm home?"

"I'm very happy you're home, bud. What I'm _not _happy about is the gigantic hissy fit your brother's going to throw tonight. I plan to wear everything bulletproof I own to dinner."

White Star stared at Seven, who blinked calmly back at him, grains of rice still stuck to his face. "I hate him. He threw me into a forest," White Star repeated vainly, trying hard not to edge into actual tantrum territory while still conveying how very, very much he loathed his big brother, and then he left.

He had no better luck with Jaune. She nodded in all the right places during his ranting, and she looked genuinely ecstatic to have him safe and sound and capable of feeding her- for the moment, anyway- but then she got bored and started polishing her knives, which always mean the nearest living thing should escape at once if it didn't want to be target practice. Bob was, of course, to be avoided at all costs, no matter how urgent the need to vent, Midori already _knew _everything, Summer was off somewhere stalking his brother, as usual, and everybody else was either on a mission, busy, or quite clearly hesitant to talk to him until they knew if he'd be alive tomorrow or not.

Eventually White Star drifted out back into the gardens and ran into Thorn. "Hi," he said, beaming when Thorn jumped a little.

"Oh, heavens! You're back!" Thorn put a hand on his heart and gawked shamelessly, brown eyes wide. "We didn't know if you'd ever come back!"

"Yeah, well," White Star said modestly, puffing his chest out maybe just a little. "I am. Brought Midori back too, finally."

"Where- uh, that is-" Thorn, who loved gossip like he loved oxygen, was clearly struggling with how exactly to ask where the hell they'd _been_ for half a year.

"The States," White Star supplied. "Doing some Cascadia work, it got a little messy."

"Oh?" Thorn managed, eyes gleaming avidly as he sidled over to a tomato plant and started plucking at the leaves haphazardly.

"Yeah," White Star drawled, wishing he could cackle like he wanted to, because Thorn's ravenous appetite for news had just given him an idea that might keep all his flesh attached. If he could get Thorn to flap his mouth in just the right places about just the right things, the Clan might be impressed enough that Grey Star would be forced to go light on the punishment- though for being essentially runaways for so long, there would undoubtedly still be pain involved. "Got us a witch, though."

"_What_!?"

"Yup." Act as if it were no big deal, shrug, examine nails carefully… and right on cue, Thorn exploded, hair flying about wildly as he hopped up and down, waving his dirty trowel in the air.

"A witch! A witch. A _witch_, he says! Well, where is she? He? Can witches be men? Can- how?"

White Star grinned madly. "She's not here yet. She's in training. She's working on her witch powers. You know, she hasn't quite got a handle on them yet, but she did manage to take out a pretty good chunk of the Shinigami's school. I figure she'll be here in a year or two."

"I-" Thorn shook his head slowly and flopped down, clearly in a daze and only just missing squashing something carrot-ish. "Oh my goodness."

"Yeah. Cool, right?"

"I think I heard about that, actually."

That sobered White Star instantly. "What, I make the news?"

"No, no, the witch. Little frogmouthed thing? All hair? _She _was all over the news, she's been in the papers for months for the Shinigami thing, they're really hunting her."

"Oh." Well, White Star had known that; nonetheless, the reminder of just how very wanted and high-profile Olivia was made him tense all over again. "She's safe."

"Hope so. Man, a witch! And she's really going to work for us? She's not going to.. you know... snap and murder us all for fun?" Thorn appeared rather skeptical, quite legitimately.

"Yeah. She's basically eating out of my hand," White Star boasted, omitting the fact that he still hadn't told her his real name and that it was definitely Midori she liked most.

Thorn returned to his weeding eventually, muttering in amazement under his breath as he pulled on two layers of gloves to deal with a particularly poisonous plant. "See you around," he called as White Star ambled off.

"Yeah! Missed you, brother!" White Star called back, already on his way to interrupt Midori's jet-lag fueled nap and inform him of the new twist in their story.

He had only taken a single step into the main house of the Clan when a hot, calloused hand fell on his shoulder. "Ah, the prodigal returns," Grey Star said softly, eyes as bright as the steel in his palm.

A burning wave of panic swept over White Star, so strongly that he was half afraid he might piss himself. From somewhere in the depths of the house came the sound of running feet as some prudent Clan member fled the confrontation. "The witch. She's going to join us," he shouted. "She'll be here! She's coming! I brought you the witch!"

Grey Star's cold gaze stared at his face for the first time in many months, carefully and completely lacking any sort of emotion, and a in a rather large miracle, seemed to find nothing wanting in his brother's presentation of what was, at best, a hopeful twisting of a possible truth. "Oh?" he said at last.

"Yes! She's doing some kind of training now, she's waiting for the media to die down, she's wanted by the Shinigami! But she'll be here!"

"So the Clan will have a witch," Grey Star mused, pale lashes sliding against his cheeks as he looked White Star up and down measuringly.

"Yes! Yes, I brought you a witch, and she's strong, she's so strong that the Shinigami wouldn't even take her on when Andrei blew up part of the Academy!" White Star babbled. Everything he'd imagined himself saying to his brother, all the righteous rage over being dumped like so much trash in a haunted forest, went right out of his head in front of the man himself. He felt vaguely weak, resentful, but more than anything he felt vast _relief_ that his brother had bought the story. Of course, beneath all the relief was a good amount of churning fear, because what if- despite all Midori's hopes and predictions- she never did contact them again? How long could White Star spin this story out until the truth came out and brought painful retribution?

"You're certain about this?" Grey Star asked, and White Star nodded sickly, hoping his brother would attribute his sweaty, pale face to shock at their sudden encounter. "The Clan with a witch, imagine that. And one pulled right out from under Cascadia's claws too. Not bad, little brother, not bad at all." He smiled horribly, and White Star whined beneath his harsh grip. "I'll look forward to the day she arrives." With that subtle warning, he dropped White Star, who lifted his eyes only to see Midori standing in the hall of the house, eye very wide.

For the second time, White Star had lied to his brother, and for the second time, it had been about Olivia. He'd made it out alive the first time, but his second falsehood was seeming less clever by the second.

* * *

><p>Bit short, but here you go. :) 3 I really appreciate the reviews I've gotten on this story so far, I read every one of them! trust me, this story is my baby, so it means a lot, guys ;)<p> 


End file.
